Bronchogenic Carcinoma News

FRIDAY, Nov. 4, 2016 – Smoking is linked to significant genetic damage in the lungs and other organs of the body, according to new research. "This study offers fresh insights into how tobacco smoke causes cancer," said co-lead author Ludmil Alexandrov, the Oppenheimer Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "Our analysis demonstrates that tobacco smoking causes mutations that lead to cancer by multiple distinct mechanisms," he said in a Los Alamos news release. "Tobacco smoking damages DNA in organs directly exposed to smoke as well as speeds up a mutational cellular clock in organs that are both directly and indirectly exposed to smoke." In the study, researchers from Los Alamos, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in England and other institutions analyzed more than 5,000 cancer tumors from smokers and nonsmokers. Cancer is caused by mutations in the DNA of a cell, ... Read more

MONDAY, Sept. 26, 2016 – Cutting-edge radiation therapy seems to provide a significant survival advantage for older people with early stage lung cancer who aren't strong enough for surgery, a pair of new studies suggests. The therapy is called stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) and it's been available for about a decade. The first study reviewed national cancer data and found that survival rates for older lung cancer patients treated with radiation therapy increased dramatically between 2004 and 2012. Those are the years during which SBRT use became widespread in the United States, said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Farach, a radiation oncologist at Houston Methodist Hospital. A second study based on Veterans Affairs cancer treatment data appears to corroborate the national findings, directly linking increased use of SBRT with improved survival rates in elderly patients. Farach ... Read more

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 31, 2016 – Researchers say they've identified 14 genes that may help determine whether a cancer treatment could help a patient. The researchers also say the findings suggest it could be possible to help people avoid unnecessary cancer treatments that won't likely benefit them. "The history of cancer treatment is filled with overreaction," said principal investigator Gary Karpen, a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. "It is part of the ethics of cancer treatment to err on the side of overtreatment, but these treatments have serious side effects associated with them. For some people, it may be causing more trouble than if the growth was left untreated," Karpen said in a Berkeley Lab release. However, there has not been a reliable way to determine which early stage cancer patients will respond to ... Read more

FRIDAY, Aug. 5, 2016 – Air pollution may shorten the lives of lung cancer patients, a new study suggests. Researchers led by Sandrah Eckel, who's with the department of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, analyzed data from more than 352,000 people in California who were diagnosed with lung cancer between 1988 and 2009. Higher exposure to the pollutants nitrogen dioxide, ozone and airborne particles was associated with an increased risk of early death. The association was strongest in patients with early stage disease, particularly adenocarcinoma, which accounts for 80 percent of lung cancer cases, the researchers said. Early stage patients with greater exposure to pollutants survived on average 2.4 years compared to 5.7 years for those with low exposure, the study found. The study was published online Aug. 4 in the journal Thorax. Since this ... Read more

TUESDAY, June 21, 2016 – Many patients with advanced lung cancer might live longer if treated surgically, but few go that route, new research indicates. A study of U.S. patients with late-stage non-small cell lung cancer found only 11 percent underwent surgery – and 27 percent got no treatment at all. Yet surgery, either alone or with other treatments, prolonged survival by as much as 41 months, researchers said. "We were surprised by the findings, but they have to be considered with caution," said study lead author Dr. Elizabeth David, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of California, Davis Medical Center, in Sacramento. "Surgery is not appropriate for every patient with stage 3 or 4 lung cancer," she noted. "We just need to make sure that appropriate patients are evaluated by surgeons, and we are working on ways to make that easier." At stages 3 and 4, the cancer ... Read more

THURSDAY, June 16, 2016 – British middle-aged adults are more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer than those who are slightly older, a new study finds. Researchers reviewed information from about 34,000 lung cancer patients in England in 2013. They found that a higher percentage of those ages 50 to 64 were diagnosed with late-stage disease than those ages 65 to 69. Patients in their 70s were more likely to be diagnosed with early stage disease. "Our results show that younger patients in their 50s and early 60s are more likely to be diagnosed with advanced lung cancer compared to patients in older age groups," David Kennedy, a data and research analyst at Cancer Research UK, said in a news release from the organization. It's not clear why younger patients are more likely to be diagnosed with the advanced stage of the disease, said Dr. Julie Sharp, Cancer Research UK's ... Read more

THURSDAY, June 9, 2016 – A new smartphone app may help lung cancer patients live longer and better by monitoring their symptoms and alerting doctors to potential problems, researchers report. The Moovcare smartphone and web application proved so effective that researchers ended the clinical trial early, said study author Dr. Fabrice Denis, a researcher at the Institut Inter-regional de Cancerologie Jean Bernard in Le Mans, France. About 75 percent of high-risk lung cancer patients were alive one year after they started using the Moovcare app, compared with 49 percent of patients provided typical cancer care, Denis said. Patients also lived seven months longer, on average, when using Moovcare – about 19 months compared to an average of 12 months for nonusers. Further, Moovcare patients required less regular CT scanning. "The number of imaging scans were reduced by 50 percent per ... Read more

MONDAY, May 2, 2016 – A type of psychotherapy might help cancer survivors deal with the long-term thinking problems some experience after chemotherapy, researchers say. It's estimated that about half of those who undergo chemotherapy for cancer develop what's often called "chemo brain." For instance, they may have trouble following conversations or remembering the steps in a project, according to background notes with the new study. Although usually mild, these changes can affect quality of life, job performance and relationships, said the researchers from the Eastern Maine Medical Center and Lafayette Family Cancer Center in Bangor, Maine. The researchers developed a cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) program called Memory and Attention Adaptation Training to help cancer survivors prevent or manage these memory problems. Their study involved 47 breast cancer survivors who underwent ... Read more

TUESDAY, Jan. 26, 2016 – Lung cancer surgery patients are most likely to have complications and to die if they're either too thin or fat, a new study suggests. The study included more than 41,000 people who had lung cancer surgery between 2009 and 2014. Patients were categorized according to their body mass index (BMI) – an estimate of body fat based on weight and height. While the study couldn't prove cause-and-effect, people who were either underweight or severely obese had the highest rates of complications and death following surgery, according to the study. The findings were to be presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons in Phoenix. Weight "is associated with a patient's overall physiology and health, but overweight people need to have more muscle to carry the extra weight around," study co-leader Dr. Trevor Williams of the University of ... Read more

THURSDAY, Jan. 14, 2016 – Smokers diagnosed with pneumonia may be at greater risk for developing lung cancer, a new study suggests. Researchers found that 9 percent of smokers admitted to the hospital for pneumonia developed lung cancer within one year, so they recommend early screening for the disease among heavy smokers treated for pneumonia. "Lung cancer is truly aggressive. The only chance of recuperation is if it's caught before it begins to cause any symptoms at all. The idea is to find the tumor well in advance," said study leader Dr. Daniel Shepshelovich, from Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Rabin Medical Center, in Israel. "Previous studies have shown that a low-dose radiation CT scan conducted once a year on heavy smokers has the potential to lower lung cancer mortality rates," he said in a university news release. "But this requires huge resources, ... Read more

FRIDAY, Nov. 13, 2015 – Rates of surgery to cure lung cancer vary greatly across the United States, a new study finds. Researchers analyzed data from patients in 38 states and the District of Columbia who were diagnosed with early stage non-small cell lung cancer between 2007 and 2011. Non-small cell lung cancer is the most common type of lung cancer. It can potentially be cured by surgery if it's detected at an early stage before it spreads, the study authors pointed out. The highest rates of surgery to cure lung cancer were seen in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Utah, at about 75 percent each. The lowest rate was in Wyoming, where patients were 25 percent less likely to have curative surgery than those in the top three states, the findings showed. "We do not have a uniform quality of health care in this country," said Dr. Helmneh Sineshaw, health services researcher with the American ... Read more

TUESDAY, Nov. 10, 2015 – Surgery to remove part of the lung can be a safe and effective treatment option for people with early stage lung cancer, even those traditionally considered "high-risk," a new study finds. Previous research had suggested that high-risk patients are more likely to have complications or to die after lung surgery. People aged 60 and older, long-term smokers, and people who have other health problems are considered high-risk for partial lung removal surgery, the researchers said. One in five patients with early stage non-small-cell lung cancer is deemed high-risk or ineligible for lung surgery, according to the study, which was published online Nov. 10 in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. But the new findings show these patients shouldn't be denied surgery, because they may benefit from it, study leader Dr. Manu Sancheti, from Emory University School of Medicine in ... Read more

SUNDAY, Sept. 27, 2015 – A new study finds that the cancer drug nivolumab (Opdivo) extends the lives of some patients with advanced lung cancer for several months. In a head-to-head comparison, patients treated with nivolumab lived an average of 12.2 months, while patients treated with the chemotherapy drug docetaxel lived an average of 9.4 months, the researchers reported. "It looks like we have a new treatment option for patients with metastatic lung cancer that progresses after standard chemotherapy," said lead researcher Dr. Hossein Borghaei, chief of thoracic medical oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. "Now we have another tool, but we have to learn how to make it better so people can even live longer," he said. The results of this phase 3 trial, which was funded by nivolumab's maker Bristol-Myers Squibb, were to be presented Sunday at the European Cancer Congress ... Read more

THURSDAY, July 23, 2015 – Soaring costs for cancer drugs are hurting patient care in the United States, a group of top oncologists claim. "High cancer-drug prices are affecting the care of patients with cancer and our health care system," Dr. Ayalew Tefferi, a hematologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said in a Mayo news release. Tefferi and his colleagues made a number of recommendations on how to address the problem in a commentary published July 23 in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices is one of the suggestions the team of 118 leading cancer experts offered as a possible solution. Along with their recommendations, the group also expressed support for a patient-based grassroots movement on change.org that is demanding action on the issue. "The average gross household income in the U.S. is about $52,000 per year. For an insured patient with ... Read more

TUESDAY, March 26 – Eating tofu and other soy foods may help women who develop lung cancer increase their odds of living longer. A study of women from Shanghai, China, published in the March 25 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, links high soy consumption before a lung cancer diagnosis with longer survival. "This is the first study to suggest an association between soy food consumption and lung cancer survival," said study author Dr. Gong Yang, a research associate professor of medicine in the division of epidemiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in Nashville. Eating soy products in small amounts in the years preceding a lung cancer diagnosis didn't seem to pose a benefit, though. Lung cancer is the leading cause of death among women in the world. It forms in the tissues of the lungs, usually in the cells that line the air passageways. The five-year survival rate is ... Read more